Office Trends from SXSW: Serendipity Is the New Synergy

South by Southwest Interactive, the annual technology conference that drew more than 30,600 techies, journalists, investors, marketers, designers–and seemingly most of San Francisco and Brooklyn–just wrapped.

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Getting some face time in at SXSW.

While tech topics dominate the hundreds of panels, the slate of panels on workplace issues—from what kind of management styles work for startups to philosophies of productivity—offers some good insights into what new developments you might see at the office soon.

This year, the buzzword around the workplace panels was “serendipity,” the importance of unexpected connections. Many speakers spun tales of lucrative business and social connections made at SXSW conferences past, and the conference itself is designed to maximize serendipitous interactions: Beer-fueled parties and networking events (not to mention spotty Internet and drained phone batteries) forced attendees to look up from their screens and actually talk to one another, spending less time online than they might otherwise.

Here are some themes that emerged:

In a digital world, face time matters. In the wake of the controversy over Yahoo’s telecommuting ban, many attendees stressed the importance of in-person interactions to promote workplace culture and collaboration. Ad firm Arnold Worldwide created a talking beer-vending machine for employees to help workers socialize. Two MIT professors discussed the Allen Curve, which shows how collaboration decreases the farther away workers sit.

On the other hand, a panel cheerfully titled “Your Desk Job Makes You Fat, Sick and Dead,” asked a provocative question: Name tasks that can only be done in the corporate office at a desk? The audience didn’t come up with many compelling answers.

To make it to the top, you sometimes have to ignore your kids. Amid the recent discussion of work-life balance with the release of Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In,’ several speakers spoke of their own lack thereof: Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk described how he spends little time with his five young children, and when he does, he’s checking email or they are with their nanny. Cisco CTO Padma Warrior recalled how, when her son was young, she used to sit him next to the treadmill so she could work out (and type on her laptop). And Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, who recapped her famous Atlantic essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” described how her son, when drawing a family tree, depicted her as a laptop, suggesting she worked perhaps a little too much. Slaughter encouraged her audience, which was largely female, to get political and advocate for paid family leaves.

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Written and edited by The Wall Street Journal’s Management & Careers group, At Work covers life on the job, from getting ahead to managing staff to finding passion and purpose in the office. Tips, questions? email us.